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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

After spending the past couple of hours on Baptism, I am really pleased with this book. I know it's terribly uncouth to praise one's own self, but I don't care: this book is fucking awesome. I feel great about it. I can't wait to get it done so I can revise it with my agent and turn it into something I can SELL.

I feel good about this one. It's a winner. Can't wait for tomorrow, my day off, when I shall make stew in my crockpot and work on Baptism until I literally cannot type any longer.

For the past few months, I've been dealing with some stuff. Some people would call this stuff heartbreak. Some would call it bullshit. It's a lot of assorted stuff and it involves things I mostly won't talk about online because of the way it impacts multiple other people's lives, and I respect them even if they are the source of a significant portion of the heartbreak/bullshit/stuff. The stuff I will talk about includes a surprise move to a new place -- in the city itself, in fact, rather than on its outskirts where I've lived all my life. These are very new things. Big changes. It's made me neglectful of my blog, but who cares, because really nobody reads this piece of crap anyway.

I'm trying to assemble a better, stronger Libbie from all the stuff. This is much easier said than done. But I've come through a lot of stuff since last January with an aplomb that has surprised and delighted me. From a distance born of necessity, I've been able to watch myself move through this strange, fractured landscape and I am impressed with the way I've chosen my route carefully, picked my way, avoided pits full of rattlesnakes and anvils dropping from the sky. I am startled to learn, at the age of almost-thirty-one, that I have an excessive portion of what some might call grace. This is, I suppose, what is meant by growing up. Huh. Go figure.

The downside is that I haven't written as much as I'd like to, aside from a few poems for my weekly writer's group (not nearly as many as I used to write) and daily journal entries, which have helped keep me happy. Not much work to speak of on Baptism for the Dead, alas, aside from work inside my head, which will be translated to Actual Words Written starting this morning.

I am back at work on the novel(s) as of today. Yes, novels plural, because I've been putting together the next project through all the stuff. It's another darkish finding-self story but this time it centers on trains, not on Mormons. Plus, I get to make up some hobo names for my characters, so I'm looking forward to wrapping up Baptism and rolling out Tin Moan (working title, obviously.) And I've already started tinkering with my third project, the one that might come after Tin Moan is done, about a horse and his boy...in a shitty coal mine. Man, I like it dark. This is possibly a reflection of the fact that I've had to keep myself sane and functional through an extraordinary amount of stuff, so why not explore the dark side of things on my computer screen, where it's safe; and possibly a reflection of the fact that dark stories have always felt deeper and more real to me. Yeah. I like Cormac McCarthy.

Well, here I am, blog that never gets read, blog that nobody gives a hoot about. I'm still around. I'm wading through stuff and it's not over yet. I'm not even sure I've hit the shallow end on the other side yet, but I am getting there and I'm still on my feet. I wish I could say that I've been writing this whole time, but I haven't. So instead, I'll say that I'm writing again, as of right now. As soon as I take a shower and fold up my futon, I'm going to crack open Baptism and I'm going to make it sing.